Astros radio icon Milo Hamilton ready for his final season

While 2012 will represent Year One in the Jim Crane era of Astros ownership, things on the TV-radio side will still look and sound very much as they looked and sounded during the Drayton McLane era.

That will change, of course, and drastically so, with the final out of the 2012 season as the Astros ring down the curtain on Milo Hamilton’s role as a full-time broadcaster and on the team’s association with Fox Sports Houston, which began in 1983 as Home Sports Entertainment.

It is well-nigh impossible to overemphasize the significance of these developments. This will be Hamilton’s 28th year in the booth for the Astros, three years longer than Gene Elston’s tenure, and the 30th season on HSE/Prime/FSN of Astros games, which move next year to Comcast SportsNet Houston.

Since Hamilton is the junior partner, in terms of longevity, in this equation – and, boy, how weird does that sound – we begin with him. Milo’s plans are to keep doing business as usual through the All-Star break and then begin contemplating his final season in the booth.

“After the All-Star Game, I’ll be seeing guys for the last time like Pat Hughes (with the Cubs) and Bob Uecker (with the Brewers), and I’m looking forward to good visits,” he said. “The club has some plans to honor me, and there will be a Milo Hamilton Day on my birthday, Sept. 2. That’s when things will get nostalgic for me.”

Hamilton will take two road trips, to Miami as the new Marlins ballpark becomes the 59th MLB stadium in which he has broadcast a game, and a late-season trip to St. Louis, where it all started for him with the 1953 Browns and 1954 Cardinals.

He will broadcast a few games in 2013, including a trip to Detroit for ballpark number 60 and, perhaps, a series of “Milo’s Mondays” home game appearances.

Hamilton will be joined once more on flagship station KTRH (740 AM) and the Astros radio network by Dave Raymond and Brett Dolan, who will alternate duties alongside Milo for home games and handle the bulk of the road games.

Raymond and Dolan came to Houston in 2006 as Hamilton’s heirs apparent, but that, too, is now in question with the change in ownership and Crane’s desire to add a former player to the booth; in fact, the Astros plan to add ex-players to their Flashback Friday broadcasts in this, their 50th anniversary season.

On the TV front, FS Houston will air 150 games – all on the cable/satellite network and none, for the first time in memory, on an over-the-air station. Bill Brown and Jim Deshaies will return for their 26th and 16th seasons, respectively, in the booth.

Greg Lucas, a member of the original HSE staff, Patti Smith and Bart Enis will return as reporters. Kevin Eschenfelder will host pregame and postgame shows, the latter with rotating analysts Art Howe, Steve Sparks and Mike Stanton.

FS Houston also will commemorate the team’s 50th anniversary season with 90-second to two-minute videos on the team’s top 50 players, airing on the weekly Astros Insider show. Similar pieces on the top 50 will air during game broadcasts.

And then, it’s so long to FS Houston and hello in 2013 to CSN Houston, with new programs and, quite likely, a lot of familiar faces and certainly some new ones in front of and behind the cameras.

It’s a year of transition that mirrors – and, in fact, arguably surpasses – the changes that the Astros will experience this year on the field and in the front office.